June 2009

Girls Camp came early this year and we were leaving on Amber's Birthday. She was really bummed that we were going to be gone for her birthday. So we tried to celebrate for several days before we left:)! Here are some pictures of us at Red Robin for dinner.

YUM! Everything was good! It was fun to go out!

Amber liked the ice cream sunday. She even shared some!

After dinner we went home and opened card and presents! It was a great day!

We (Samantha, Paige & I) left for Girls Camp early Wednesday morning, June 3rd. Girls Camp was great. I had not been since I was a young women...so I had lots of reservations and concerns. My biggest concern was that I was going to forget something or not get something done just because I didn't know what I was doing. Well it all worked out and for the most part I was pretty (I am trying to think if I should say sane or in control...neither one really works) okay with how things went. I only got frustrated once and now I look back and could kick myself for how silly that really was. Oh well. I know that life is a learning experience and I am going to keep trying to learn to loosen up. I can look back and see what I needed to have done...next step, do the right thing in the right moment! (Good advice, now how do I apply it to my whole life?). Pine, Arizona is where camp is and it is beautiful. The days were warm and the nights were cool. Actually little cold in the middle of the night and most of us got a little cold. Fortunately there were "real" bathrooms with running water and everything. They even have showers, but we were each only allowed one for the whole week. The stake provided the food and most of the classes, etc. So really it was not very stressful and mostly fun. I think all of the girls had a fun time and I have lots of ideas for next year!

Here we are ready to go! It is off to Girls Camp!

This was Bishop's Day. The whole Bridlegate crew!

When we got back from camp there was not much time to rest. Summer was in full swing. Kent and Lindsay started swimming lessons and Samantha started a two week project that I will get into in a minute. I signed Amber up for a week long performance with the Gilbert Fine Arts Association (GFFA). I wanted her to have some acting experience. In the end she choose to be a stage manager and wasn't on the stage at all...go figure! I can't remember exactly what Paige was doing those two weeks, but she must have kept busy:)! On to Samantha...

Samantha wanted to earn some money this summer. Last year she did a cleaning service. She did several jobs for people, but wasn't very aggressive about getting more work. So we did some brainstorming and she decided on doing a 2 week theater camp for kids. She worked up the fliers and gave them out to lots of friends and family (she was better at getting the word out this year). She had two classes. An older group who met 3 days a week for a couple hours in the afternoon and a younger group who met 2 days a week for a couple of hours in the afternoon. I could write a ton about this, but I will refrain and just try and sum it up. They put a performance on at the end of the 2 weeks. It turned out cute, of course there were lots of glitches, but I think she did a great job pulling it off for her first time! Overall it was hard work, but a great experience. In fact, at the beginning when the families paid her she was concerned because she hadn't done much at that point. Fast forward to the post performance. I asked her if she felt like she had earned the money then and she said she definitely had.

We had the performance at the Church
and spent most of the afternoon getting everything ready.

Here are the boys waiting to go on stage.

In the younger group we had divided the kids up into two groups
and each group did the same two plays.
So the audience had to watch each play twice,
but it gave each child a lot of time on the stage!

Here is the end of the evening! WHEW!! We made it through!
Everyone did great and hopefully they all had fun!

On June20th our stake was assigned to help work on the Temple Grounds, so we took our kids and joined in. Dave and I had actually gone on a long bike ride that morning and so we were a bit late joining the clean up crew. In fact they were just finishing up. However, they were able to find some plants for us to plant and so we were able to serve despite our tardiness:)!


We got our tools and equipment and off we went!


Hopefully we put the plants in the right spots...it was kind of hard to tell.


All in all, it only took about 30 minutes to do our job. Not too bad.




I know Paige had a few things going on in June and one thing I know for sure was that we had signed her up for a guard start class with a friend. She had a fun time learning to be a life guard. There were kids of all ages in the class and she thinks that she wants to do it again next summer.

As for Amber and her acting. I was feeling sad that I had paid so much money for her to be behind the scenes, but fortunately, my friend Mary did a play for her sing and swim (she does this for free for the kids that are her kids ages just for the experience...she is extraordinarily amazing!)this summer. They worked on a short musical version of Cinderella and Amber got to be the lead. In my next blog entry you will see more about this along with the performance pictures.

Well, that is the first 1/2 (actually a little more than half) of June....more to come!